The mind-boggling possibilities of technological advancement...except for the immortality part, for there’s still one thing the inventor has to deal with: the Soul.
Superheroes are unbelievable, and that's the point. But technology is quickly closing the gap between what is human and superhuman. Advances in cybernetics, aviation, and other areas have created a convincing argument that these physical limitations are only temporary - that one day we can read minds, turn invisible, fly, and live forever.
1. Invisibility
The once cosmic-radiated ability of the Invisible Woman is now within our grasp - in theory anyway. The concept behind real-life invisibility is that light travels in straight lines. To make something invisible, light must bend around the object and then realign itself. For example, the way a flowing river bends around a rock.
Researchers at Duke University led by John Pendry made the first significant step toward real invisibility in 2006, when the team announced that it had developed a metamaterial that can bend microwaves around objects, causing headlines to declare that Harry Potter's invisibility cloak had come to fruition. However, the technology has its limitations, one being that the invisible objects are relatively small, some no bigger than a coin, and that the cloak can only bend microwaves and radio waves, which have much longer wavelengths than visible light.
In June of this year, a team of scientists from Singapore and China developed a cloaking device that works in natural light. The device was able to successfully cloak a fish and a cat, but only from a few observational directions. The cloak itself is a little bulky and in no shape for everyday use.
There's no doubt that mastering invisibility still has a long way to go, but now it's just a matter of technology, and it's beginning to catch up.
2. Mind Control
Now, we're not talking about the villainous superpower of controlling the minds of your fellow humans. But researchers have succeeded in helping people to control prosthetic implants and free-moving robots using just their brainpower.
A group of student researchers published a study in the June issue of Journal of Neural Engineering detailing how test subjects were able to control a quadcopter with their minds. Using a non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG), those subjects turned the robot to the right by thinking of a closed fist and then moved it upward by thinking of two closed fists. The EEG cap understands these different brain patterns and translates them into commands sent to the quadcopter.
PopMech spoke with the team about applications of this technology in other fields, specifically medicine. "The big idea behind this is to look for signals anyone can give, even someone paralyzed," says Karl LaFleur, the lead author on the study. Other science outfits have investigated ways for amputees to have mind control over mechanics arms.
The average accuracy of the team's EEG device only reaches about 66 percent for now - far too low for practical implementation. But it is one step closer to melding mind and machine.
3. Sensory Augmentation
In March, designers from the Royal College of Art revealed the Eidos two pieces of headgear able to amplify your sight and hearing.
The gadgets themselves look otherworldly, like a minimalist version of Dr. Doom's mask, but the idea is quite simple. As the team describes it, every day we're bombarded with different "overlapping signals"; the Eidos isolates one signal and then amplifies it. The result: targeted hearing and vision.
The team mentions possible applications for the device in schools and sports, though the bulky white design of the first generation device is unrealistic for consumer use.
4. Super Strength
The superpowered exoskeleton has been sci-fi fodder for years, and Matt Damon's recent robot-assisted ass kicking in Elysium is only the most recent example. Today, engineers have designed robotic assist systems that can make military combatants more efficient or help the elderly gain mobility.
As Max Scheder-Bieschin, CFO of Esko Bionics, bluntly stated, he wants to build the Iron Man suit. Although Tony Stark's technical wonder still remains fiction, Esko Bionics is only one of many companies that has tried to unlock the secret of super strength. The Army is also developing an exosuit, called the Warrior Web to help soldiers in the field carry heavy equipment and limit musculoskeletal injury. Similarly, Lockheed Martin has developed and exoskeleton suit called the HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) and Raytheon created the Sarcos Robot for similar purposes, which both give soldiers increased carrying capacity and limit physical stresses, but don't quite pack enough power to punch through brick walls.
5. Super Vision
Credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT
X-Ray vision is a superpower humans acquired a century ago. But new research could lead to a new way to see through solid objects - a way that is more cost effective, practical, and significantly more cancer-free.
Using low-cost Wi-Fi technology, MIT professor Dina Katabi and her student Fadel Adib are working to develop a way to look through walls. The concept is called Wi-Vi and is similar to radar and sonar. The device sends out two signals, one the inverse of the other. These signals cancel each other out when in contact with static obstacles, but any disparities between the two signals, such as movement, are recorded when the signals bounce back, much like sonar.
As for possible applications, the technology could help emergency responders search for survivors after earthquakes or even enhance the capability of motion gaming, such as the Xbox's Kinect, which today relies on near-infrared light.
6. Mind Reading
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, want to read your mind. In 2008, professors Marcel Just and Tom Mitchell published a study that mapped the brain's response to simple nouns using functional MRI. Basically: If you thought of the word "house," then a computer could guess what you were thinking based on your brain's neural activity.
Karim Kassam, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon, took his colleague's research a step further and started mapping emotions. Because fMRI data can be messy, the stimulus (or in this case, emotion) must be experienced several times. One of the added challenges was making sure that the computer was capturing emotional response, and not the act of inducing an emotion.
They tapped the theatre department for people specialized in producing emotion and displayed different photos to elicit different responses. The study uncovered that different people respond to emotion in similar ways.
7. Flight
It's the classic superpower conversation starter: Would you rather have super strength or the power of flight? Put us down for Superman–style aviation.
Men and women who dreamed of flying without an airplane have typically turned to the jetpack. Yves Rossy, known to many as Jetman, is pioneering the frontier of superhuman flight. Rossy's first American flight in 2011 sent the Swiss inventor to speeds up to 190 mph in his custom-designed jetwing.
However, the technology has limitations - most notably, the jetwing can't take off without the help of another aircraft, specifically helicopters. Also, the flight time is limited. Rossy's original design only provided 10 minutes of aerial spectacle before he deployed parachutes for landing. But on July 29, the 53-year-old daredevil flew at the Wisconsin air show and is already training the next Jetman to take his place.
The other superhero-like flight that made us say "wow": Felix Baumgartner's daredevil fall from stratospheric heights - 120,000 feet.
8. Immortality
It's tempting to dismiss the bold claims of futurists as pie-in-the-sky - or merely empty hope that they won't die. But the promise of immortality is not one taken lightly.
Dmitry Itskov, a 32-year-old Russian tech entrepreneur, is the man behind Global Futures 2045, an international congress that focuses on how to overcome 21st century challenges. At this meeting of the minds, Itskov laid out his plan to learn how to remove the human brain and consciousness and keep it alive in a robot body. And he wants to do it in about 30 years.
It sounds crazy, but Itskov has support from top minds at MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. Maybe in 30 years man and machine won't be so separate after all.
Related Posts:
1. Quantum Stealth: The Camouflage Fabric That Makes Its Wearers Invisible
2. 5 Serious Attempts To Build An Invisibility Cloak
3. 'Ghost Cape': The Ground-Breaking Chinese Technology That Can Make An Object Appear To Be Something Else
4. Wi-Vi: The New Technology That Lets You See Through Walls
5. Top 9 Brain-Controlled Techs
6. Augmented 3D Printing: Architectural Model Overlay App
7. The 5 Most Disruptive Technologies of 2012
8. How 8 Sci-Fi Gadgets Are Becoming Reality
9. Science Fiction Dreams That Came True In 2012
1. Quantum Stealth: The Camouflage Fabric That Makes Its Wearers Invisible
2. 5 Serious Attempts To Build An Invisibility Cloak
3. 'Ghost Cape': The Ground-Breaking Chinese Technology That Can Make An Object Appear To Be Something Else
4. Wi-Vi: The New Technology That Lets You See Through Walls
5. Top 9 Brain-Controlled Techs
6. Augmented 3D Printing: Architectural Model Overlay App
7. The 5 Most Disruptive Technologies of 2012
8. How 8 Sci-Fi Gadgets Are Becoming Reality
9. Science Fiction Dreams That Came True In 2012
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